Much is being said and written about organizational health and culture. Culture has been described as what happens when the CEO, the partners, or the leaders leave the room; that’s when culture takes over. It’s the way you do business and the way people think and act when the employee manual is silent. A healthy culture provides the building blocks for a sustainable and successful firm. With an unhealthy culture, employees see work as a grind – something to be endured.

Build a cohesive leadership team – As Lencioni says, “It’s kind of like a family. If the parents’ relationship is dysfunctional, the family will be too.” Ask the questions:

Does my leadership team build trust?

Does my leadership team manage conflict? Do we fight fair?

Do we focus on overall team/organization results?

Create clarity – this is the process that ensures there is little confusion, politics and in-fighting. Everyone needs to know:

why do we exist?

how do we behave?

what do we do and how will we succeed?

what’s important, right now?

Overcommunicate clarity – once you have a cohesive leadership team and have set a course, it needs to be communicated to staff again and again and again. The key message needs to come from different sources, and constantly.

Reinforce clarity – a leader can’t be around all the time to manage your culture, so put systems in place that help reinforce the message. Some of these are:

Recruiting and hiring – hire for fit, and train for skills. Does your new hire fit your culture?

Performance management/compensation/recognition – build them around the values of your firm.

Firing – as Lencioni puts it, “Keeping a relatively strong performer who is not a cultural fit creates a variety of problems. Tolerating behaviour that flies in the face of core values….becomes almost impossible to reverse over time.”